Mahz's Dev Journal

[KeysOfKayes]

For some reason this: keeps uploading as this:

[LegendBegins]

For some reason this: keeps uploading as this:

@KeysOfKayes

That's a skipping issue with the gif resetting to the first frame. It could be an issue on the uploader's part (especially since I haven't seen problems with any other profile picture gifs), but I suppose it's a possibility that the server itself is causing the skip. Try using a different gif, and if the problem doesn't persist, switch back to the current one. If it reappears, there's nothing we can do about it, because the issue dwells in the gif itself. Unless, of course, there's an error that I'm unaware of, but it shouldn't affect yours alone. EDIT: According to Mahz, it is a server error, and will be corrected. And, well, you can read it for yourself. VVVVVVV

[Mahz]

For some reason this: keeps uploading as this:

@KeysOfKayes

Thanks. Looks like the underlying image-resizing library I use breaks your gif even though it's just resizing it from 150x150 to 150x150. I'll add a check so that images that are already within the 150x200 constraint are not touched. Also noticed I broke the "Delete Avatar" button. Fixing at the moment.

[KeysOfKayes]

Also, was signature functionality changed recently? I know my, as well as others, sigs fit within the pixel limit, and now they're being cut off.

[LegendBegins]

Haven't caught up in this topic yet. But I did just push up a change: The guild now resizes images and hosts them itself. - Max avatar dimensions changed from 150x150 to 150x200 (150px wide, 200px tall) - You can choose an image larger than 150x150 and the guild will resize it to 150x200 for you (maintaining aspect ratio) - You must upload your old avatar manually to move it into the new system. In a week or so, I'll be removing all old avatars. If you go to your "Edit Avatar" form, you'll be able to access your old avatar so that you can conveniently upload it into the new system. - Performance boost on pages that display avatars since you use my fast host and I aggressively cache avatars. Lemme know if you have an issue. I also ask that you don't try to break the upload system by selecting non-images or massive images. It's kinda fragile.

I noticed that >results in colored text. Thank you @Mahz and anybody affiliated with it. I wonder if this is in light of the spam adventure games, but nonetheless it is very much appreciated!

@Aeonumbra

I noticed that people in Spam use it a lot so I decided to silently start styling it as greentext yesterday.

@Mahz

The image upload system, the feature I've been looking forward to the most. You have no idea how much I love you, Mahz. When the Guild saves the images, does it save the original, or the resized version? If it resizes it before saving, it saves much more server data.

[LegendBegins]

Also, was signature functionality changed recently? I know my, as well as others, sigs fit within the pixel limit, and now they're being cut off.

@KeysOfKayes

Yes, the signature size has been reduced to a maximum of 200 pixels tall, I believe.

[Lillian Thorne]

I just resized my image to 200 and it is still getting cut off at the bottom. Not sure why.

[Mahz]

Also, was signature functionality changed recently? I know my, as well as others, sigs fit within the pixel limit, and now they're being cut off.

@KeysOfKayes

- Just fixed the system so that it doesn't try to resize images if they're within the 150 width x 200 height constraint. I re-uploaded your avatar and it works. - Yeah, I limited sigs from 300px to 200px. I'll just reverse it back to 300px so that people can deal with one thing at a time. In this case, people will have to adjust their sigs since the scrollbars aren't there anymore. Will push up 200px to 300px fix in a moment

[Mahz]

I just resized my image to 200 and it is still getting cut off at the bottom. Not sure why.

@Lillian Thorne

Avatar or signature?

[Lillian Thorne]

Signature. Edit: Only it looks fine now.

[Genkai]

I had a question about load times. If I go to the front page or the subscription page or say extensive threads like this, the load time is still going, even after a few minutes with everything seemingly loaded already. Is there any way to fix this since it probably isn't good for the site? Even if I "stop loading page" it keeps cycling anyway which I'd understand for hefty things like images but if most of the stuff is text...I dunno, am I worrying over nothing?

[Mahz]

Want to like...defies principles. Gahhh! Anyway, I mentioned being able to create an etherpad as a supplement to a PM conversation. What about a cloned PM feature that would create Etherpads instead of PMs? It would be a much simpler creation interface (simply a textbox with space to add comma-delimited usernames and a button), but the options would have to be expanded to allow new users to be invited later. I see it working like invite-only Google Docs: I send an Etherpad (new, fancier name should be invented) invitation to @Mahz and @TheMaster99. Now Mahz, TheMaster99 and I can write and edit my Etherpad. Mahz suggests that @LegendBegins be invited. Only I can invite LegendBegins, and I decide to do that. Now Mahz, TheMaster99, LegendBegins and I can edit my Etherpad. LegendBegins thinks @Hank should join us. I don't invite Hank to the Etherpad. No one else can, either. Only Mahz, TheMaster99, LegendBegins and I can edit my Etherpad. When we are done with the Etherpad, I click the Close/Lock* button. Now no one can edit the Etherpad, including me. The contents of the Etherpad are still available to myself, Mahz, TheMaster99 and LegendBegins. *Now, I haven't dived too much into Etherpad. Is there a way to disable it from further edits? If so, I'd suggest a Close/Lock button that the creator can use when the Etherpad is finished. The other way to do this might be to extract the Etherpad text and chatlog, create a PM with the contents of both and the users on the Etherpad, and destroy the Etherpad instance. Just my $0.02 on the matter.

@Captain Jordan

Thanks, the breakdown was helpful. That's what I have in mind as the most generalized implementation of the Etherpad system. Here's my attempt to distill it:

• A user can create and manage many pads.
• The pad GM can add/remove others to/from a whitelist of people that are authorized to edit the pad.
• The pad GM can toggle a pad between "Public" (anyone can see) and "Private" (only those on the whitelist can see)
• A pad has a URL like /etherpads/42. That's a shareable URL.
  • If the pad is "Public", then non-whitelisted users will see the latest revision of the pad
  • If the pad is "Private", then non-whitelisted users will just see a "Sorry, this pad is private" message
• The pad GM can "Lock"/"Unlock" a pad. A locked pad cannot be edited until the GM unlocks it.
• The pad GM cannot delete a pad unless they are the only user on the pad's whitelist (because users should not be able to delete the labor of other users). If a GM wants out of a pad, they must promote another user to pad GM before they can leave the pad. The delete button becomes a "Leave" button when there are 2+ users on a pad's whitelist, and it becomes a "Delete" button when there's a single user.
• Perhaps [pad=42][/pad] BBCode can be introduced to allow users to embed the *contents* of an Etherpad in a post or PM (not the actual Etherpad editor itself). If the embedded pad is private instead of public, it'll just render as "The contents of this pad are private".
• Etherpad has a built-in system of "revisions". As people make changes to a pad, revisions are saved to the database. This allows users to go back to see previous revisions or iterate through a pad's revision history to watch it change over time. However, it makes sense for me to add some sort of "published_revisions" system on top of it. A published_revision is created when the GM clicks a "Publish" button. The latest published revision of public pads is what people see. It allows the pad GM to only update the public view of a pad when a milestone is reached.

Thoughts? This is just me trying to translate some ideas into less-abstract implementation details. Further notes:

• The hardest part about the Etherpad integration is that I have to host Etherpad on its own server. This adds operational complexity to the Guild for what's a rather niche feature, so I'm reluctant to rush into this.
• As soon as I implement Etherpad integration, I'll have to spend time maintaining it which means I have less time to build things.
• Etherpad is complex enough to where it's hard for me to experiment with it like I normally like to do with new features. This is why I think it'll pay off the most to implement it in the most general way possible (people can create and share tabs as they wish) rather than trying to be clever with it that has less appeal (like limiting Etherpads to an optional tab on a Roleplay). Once I get the general system working and get a feel for Etherpad's limits, and once the community has played with the general system for a while, we'll be in a better position to think of sensible improvements to the system.

As far as etherpads go, I don't see any reason to get overly complicated with it. Having an on-site tool to be able to collaborate together would be an awesome improvement all in itself, and I hardly think anybody would be against the idea. A PM system clone, converted to an etherpad does sound like a good way to do it, though I have negative experience in coding so I wouldn't quite know. However I think you should just take the 'New Reply' box, clone it into a module, and add the ability for others to join like a convo system. The 'new reply' box has everything you need, and can be controlled by whomever started the 'conversation'. Add a little window for present users, an add/remove user button, and maybe a small chat box. As for the dice, the biggest issue is the ability to people to discretely re-roll until they get the number they want. I would recommend maybe another, optional?, tab 'Dice Logs' will a roll button, that records the user's name, roll number, and an optional box for them to write in the action they are rolling for.

@Aeonumbra

The collaborative "New Reply" box sounds like what @ZayZe pitched to me in IRC. It's a pretty cool idea, although I would need more assurance that people would actually want to use it that way since it's not as general of a system. Though if I did implement that, it would come after the general system is implemented. At which point we would all have better opinions about what we want and don't want. Agreed about dice. I think the most general system for dice is for GMs to optionally enable dice on their roleplay. This reveals a "Rolls" tab. When a player is writing their post, a dice widget will appear above the post that let's them conveniently roll (and test-roll) dice and see their outcomes right there so they can immediately incorporate it into their post with some [roll=143]Gooseblight kills the goblin[/roll] BBCode that links to the dice roll and shows more detailed results on click/hover. Players have to write a short description of a roll before they can roll it. This is what prevents cheating. Someone is clearly cheating when you see "Gooseblight attacks goblin" three times in the dice log and the player selects the winning roll.

I'm so excited for the 'etherpad' of awesomeness to happen. Just imagine writing in your roleplays, *LIVE* with your partner. No pauses between posts. Live roleplaying. er mer gerd.

@ZayZe

Actually, can you break down exactly what you envision like Captain Jordan did in this post? Since you're looking forward to the system so much, I'd like to hear exactly what you have in mind since you have much more of a vision than I do. For example, if a roleplay works by all of its participants taking turns writing their posts, then how do you and your partner "roleplay live" from a single Etherpad? I need help connecting the dots.

[Mahz]

I had a question about load times. If I go to the front page or the subscription page or say extensive threads like this, the load time is still going, even after a few minutes with everything seemingly loaded already. Is there any way to fix this since it probably isn't good for the site? Even if I "stop loading page" it keeps cycling anyway which I'd understand for hefty things like images but if most of the stuff is text...I dunno, am I worrying over nothing?

@Genkai

You can ignore that since it has no impact on the server. Once you see text on the page, the server itself is done processing your request and has moved on to other people's requests. However, sometimes the "Waiting for roleplayerguild.com [or some 3rd party site]" will hang around because, in most cases, some non-critical assets have loaded in the background but the connection hasn't closed yet. This will be a common sight when I add advertisements back to the guild. It's also common when a browser extension makes a request to some server but hangs. (The reason I haven't yet is because I've been waiting for Google to resolve a network-wide problem they've been having: http://blog.sucuri.net/2015/01/adsense-abused-with-malvertising-campaign.html, but it looks like it's limited to some ad networks that I can simply avoid.)

[Mahz]

Edit: Tags still eat spaces. Words still get randomly glued together due to that.

@Shienvien

Oh yeah, formalized this into an actual issue: https://github.com/danneu/guild/issues/34

As a sidenote, isn't PMs sending alerts a bit superfluous? I noticed that whenever someone PMs me, I get both a PM notification and an alert. It would be cleaner if PMs just gave the PM-notify and left alerts alone; right now I appear to need to separately go to the alert tab to make the alert go away, too.

@Shienvien

It's actually just one system: The "bell" button shows the count of all your notifications. The "PMs" button just shows the count of your notifications where notification.type === 'PM'. It's redundant til I spend some more time on the notification system. But you shouldn't have the general problem or clearing your PM notifications and still have PM notifications on the notifications page since it's the same system. At the moment, viewing a convo will clear its related PM notifications. But all other notifications have to be cleared manually (like @mentions). It's still pretty rough.

[Genkai]

Okay thanks for quelling my concern! ^^ Also one more thing: Say I want to copy/paste a CS but when I paste it, it loses its formatting, so if it had boldness, line breaks, eat, it comes a big blob of text that I need to tweak myself (so much work!). Is this supposed to happen? Because I thought a few days ago, you could copy/paste and formatting would remain. (unless of course you paste as plain text...)

Okay thanks for quelling my concern! ^^ Also one more thing: Say I want to copy/paste a CS but when I paste it, it loses its formatting, so if it had boldness, line breaks, eat, it comes a big blob of text that I need to tweak myself (so much work!). Is this supposed to happen? Because I thought a few days ago, you could copy/paste and formatting would remain. (unless of course you paste as plain text...)

@Genkai

Click on 'View Raw' in the top right, and copy the CS from there. That way, all the formatting is already done for you.

[LegendBegins]

One idea I had. How about introducing user titles, such as those we had prior to GuildFall? It was simple for a user to go to their settings, change their name (if they were changing character, for example), and it would display below their username.

[ZayZe]

@Mahz I'm no graphic artist or programmer but this is what I envisioned. "A picture is worth a thousand words" Right? There's 2 users but I'm lazy to go back and edit the pic. I know it isn't much but that's just what my "mind" "sees" for this etherpad idea. The chat boxes would work the way they do now, but the 'guildpad' only engages when you invite somebody to that chat box. Maybe how you invite the player is through the notifications button or something. Like I said, I'm gonna leave it to you guys since most of you have a better idea and understanding of it than I do. I really don't know how else to explain it, that's just the way I see it, very simple and easy to use. I don't know if you still have that test site up or not, so I can't see what you guys have done so far.

[Syben]

@ZayZe That looks fantastic. The only question is, ideally, would it be persistent say if you were browsing through spam topics?

[ZayZe]

@Aeonumbra I doubt it. The way I see it, is the etherpad doesn't engage unless you invite your buddies. So if your just posting things in spam forums there would be no need to use the implantation of the etherpad. Unless you wanted to invite your friends then you guys can just all chill together on the etherpad until one of you gets bored. I don't see this being used or very much viable for the spam section honestly. I mostly see this as a better means to RP.